“I think I went into the translation business naively. I thought it was going to be easy but this has been a real learning process for me.”
So admits Ghassan Fergiani, the managing director of Darf Publishers, the London-based imprint dedicated to publishing Arabic fiction and books about Libya and the wider Middle East in English translation.
“Every book is a learning process but that means that every book is also very costly. At the moment Darf is not a commercial success and I don’t know how long we can continue,” he says.
“My problem with publishing so far is that we are not known as a publishing company and neither are our authors. We are starting to become noticed amongst readers but we have a long way to go yet before we become established as a publisher of fiction in translation.”
In many ways, Ghassan’s initial optimism is easy to understand. One of four male heirs to a bookselling, distribution and publishing dynasty whose history spans two continents and almost seven decades, the 54-year-old bookseller can justifiably claim that books and literature are in his blood.
Not only does Ghassan own two bookshops in London but his three brothers, Hisham, Usama and Samir, also own and operate three bookshops in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as well as Darf’s parent publishing company, Dar Al Fergiani, which was established in the 1950s by their father, Mohammed Bashir.
Original article by Nick Leech
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